Page 15 of Every Chance After

“I can’t have kids,” she says in a wildly unemotional tone. “No uterus means no kids.”

“Oh, Ashe.” Cora’s voice trembles.

“What?” Ashe demands loudly. “Is this a sick joke? She comes in here for a car accident, and you’re telling me she can’t?—”

“I shouldn’t have had the knife in my lap,” she says. “It slid around the passenger seat on the curves, and I wanted to keep it from falling into the cracks or on the floor. It was a dumb mistake. An accident. It’s my fault.”

“No, it’s that asshole’s fault for hitting you,” Ashe corrects rightly.

“The hospital provides counseling services,” the doctor offers, “or a Chaplain, if needed. The important thing is that she’s going to be okay.”

“Okay? She’s not okay,” Ashe argues. “She’s…”

His voice trails like he can’t finish his sentence. I wonder, briefly, what he would’ve said.Broken. Defective. Unfixable.

I peer around the door’s edge to see him on his mother’s shoulder again. Even worse, I see Marina. She isn’t crying; she doesn’t even seem sad. With her delicate fingers looped together at her stomach, twisting her engagement ring, she looks strangely content as she stares up at Ashe and his mom, consoling each other. Her face hints at an almost wanton expression—I think. I don’t know this woman. Sure as hell don’t understand why she isn’t balling her eyes out or, at least, cursing, yelling, throwing shit across the room.

If this isn’t a life-is-shit-moment, I don’t know what it is.

But watching her watching them, I wonder if she feels left out of her own tragedy.Sheshould be the one being consoled right now.

Not that I can offer her that. Or anything. I’m nothing but the man who did this to her.

Somehow, I find my legs and return to my father, nearly collapsing into his arms again. Wade and Christie are gone. Jim and his officer await their turn with Marina, dutifully holding the bag with her salvaged things—the shattered and torn remains of the devastation I caused.

Regret and guilt swirl in my head, making me dizzy. I don’t deserve to take comfort in my father while Marina lies there, no one holding her.Why is no one holding her?

Into Dad’s shoulder, I whisper, “She can’t have kids, Dad. She’ll recover, but she can’t have kids. Because of me.”

“It was an accident, son. Plain and simple,” he breathes against my head. “An accident.”

His words don’t ease my grief.

“There’s nothing more you can do here,” he says, an echoing reminder of last night’s stillborn colt—it seems like a lifetime ago.Nothing can be done.

“Let me take you home.”

The word sounds strange, like I don’t know where that is. “Not yet. I need… not yet.”

CHAPTERFOUR

Marnie

The room is quiet,aside from Ashe’s sobs and the faint beeping of the monitors. My heart breaks for him and our lost plans.Hisplans.Ourplans. We were so close to our dreams, so achingly close. Watching Ashe crumble against his mom solidifies the harsh reality of what’s happened and pulls my remaining hopes through my fingers, unraveling the strings that hold us together. No hope-reconstruction project can salvage them. Those hopes are gone. Forever.

Poof.

A dark side of me, the part that lives in my previous abandonment like an inescapable shadow, fears that’s not all I’ve lost.

I know I have to be strong for them, but a black hole forms in my emptiness, sucking me into it. I’m here, lying in a hospital bed, but I’m not here at all. I’m lost in a new reality.I can’t have children.MyGame of Lifecar has suddenly downshifted, backtracked, and off-roaded from the board, forced to sail over the table’s edge. Game over.

“We’ll keep you here for a few days as you recover,” the doctor continues.

“Wait, what about Jamaica?” Ashe’s sudden return to the conversation makes my shoulders jolt. And then, ache. “We leave Sunday morning.”

The doctor shakes her head. “Marnie can’t travel. Recovery will take six weeks or so.”

“That’s what they said when I had my hysterectomy,” Cora says, “and I was back to work in three.”

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